Category: Wuxia: a Chinese Art Form

The Honor of Violet Fate (I Shall Seal the Heavens, #3) by Er Gen

The Honor of Violet Fate (I Shall Seal the Heavens, #3) by Er Gen

“His name is Meng Hao,” said Bai Yunlai quietly. “Have you heard of him? Recently, everybody in the Southern Domain has been talking about him.”

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In The Honor of Violet Fate, former scholar turned cultivator Meng Hao continues his efforts to become one of the most powerful magic users of his era.

He has made the decision to learn alchemy because of the unfortunate ingestion of a highly toxic magical plant which is slowly killing him. If he can learn everything there is to know about how to create medicinal pills, maybe he can concoct a cure before it’s too late.

Every cultivator knows the most talented alchemists can be found in the highly selective and secretive Violet Fate Sect.

“His true goal in joining the Violet Fate Sect was to become a novitiate of Grandmaster Pill Demon and study the most powerful Dao of alchemy in the entire Southern Domain. Then he would create his own branch of alchemic arts.”

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The concerns I had in the last two books were mitigated somewhat in this entry in the series because of the introduction of alchemy to Meng Hao’s cultivation. He finally has some time to stay in one place and have a break from continual attacks from other magic users, which had a lot to do with the repetitious nature of the other books.

That’s not to say that there isn’t some monotony. It may be due to translation issues, but some phrases are used over and over again. It reminds me of passages from Homer or other stories that were originally transmitted through live storytellers. I imagine that if you read this story aloud, it might have a hypnotic quality to it through the repetition.

But I wasn’t reading aloud and it doesn’t really work.

“It felt like being slapped across the face, like having a dagger plunged into his chest. As an alchemist, all of it was a direct attack on him.”

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It’s still annoying that all of the women in this world are in love with Meng Hoa like in the previous books. However, there seems to be a major love interest developing and the passages where they interact are actually quite touching.

“She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Meng Hao’s figure had at some point become deeply ingrained into her; he was now a part of her very heart, a part that would never leave her.”

The romantic in me likes that very much.

The more I read I Shall Seal the Heavens, the more I realize that I am not the intended audience. This fantasy is more about spiritual cultivation and competition, than the relationships between the characters or character development. The fighting and acquisition of magical items is more important than the embodiment of spiritual virtues or enlightenment.

But even knowing all of that, I still want to know what Meng Hoa is going to get up to next. So I’m going to press on!

Only recommended for fans of the genre, wuxia.

Thanks for reading!

Cutting Into the Southern Domain (I Shall Seal the Heavens, #2) by Er Gen

Cutting Into the Southern Domain (I Shall Seal the Heavens, #2) by Er Gen

“In the Cultivation world, respect is delivered to the powerful.”

Meng Hao, the failed scholar turned spiritual cultivator, continues his quest to become the most powerful magical practitioner in the Southern Domain.

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Shedding his old identity and values, Meng Hao is becoming someone even his old sect members do not recognize. By utilizing secret methods, he has created a source of power within himself that is an anathema to the will of the heavens.

But he no longer cares. Because even though these methods are forbidden, it has brought Meng Hao incredible power. And that, for now, is his ultimate goal.

Despite the epic storytelling potential of I Shall Seal the Heavens, my complaints with the last book continued in this one- the repetition, predictability, and the slow slide of the hero into deeper darkness rather than enlightenment.

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I keep wondering if that isn’t the point of these books, the idea that even the spiritually inclined among us can become corrupted in their search for power over themselves and others. If that is the case, Er Gen is taking readers there, but incredibly slowly.

The manner in which the author depicts women in this world is particularly troubling to this female reader. In addition to making the women all about their appearance, every one Meng Hao meets inevitably falls in love with him despite his egregious and sometimes abusive behavior. It definitively fails the Bechdel Test.

I think the most engaging characters in Cutting Into the Southern Domain aren’t human. Readers are introduced to a ferocious spirit creature as well as a chatty mystical shape changer. The lightness they bring to the table doesn’t offset the otherwise repetitive and depressing nature of the story, but they help.

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I hope the next book moves out of the themes the author has fully explored in the first two book entries in the series. The world he has built is so fantastical and full of potential. It’s just a shame it isn’t a better story.

Only recommended for fans of the genre.

Thanks for reading!

Patriarch Reliance (I Shall Seal the Heavens, #1) by Er Gen

Patriarch Reliance (I Shall Seal the Heavens, #1) by Er Gen

Meng Hao, an ambitious yet ultimately unsuccessful scholar, is kidnapped by a magically powerful woman and catapulted into a world of “cultivators”, mortals who grow their spiritual power in a never ending quest to become immortal. It is a dangerous world and Meng decides that the only way to stay alive is to become as powerful as he possibly can, as quickly as he can.

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Patriarch Reliance was my first foray into the written world of the fascinating genre known as “wuxia”. I say ‘written’ because I this past summer I watched a show of the same genre on Netflix and thought it might be interesting to read a book. I Shall Seal the Heavens was one of the highest rated wuxia series available that has been translated into English.

What is wuxia? The definition from Google is: “a genre of Chinese fiction or cinema featuring itinerant warriors of ancient China, often depicted as capable of superhuman feats of martial arts.”

Patriarch Reliance is an adventure fantasy that uses many components of traditional Chinese medicine in its magic system or spiritual cultivation. Traditional Chinese medicine was a subject I’d never studied until I found myself looking up the topic to understand how the magic works in this book. It seems quite complex to me, but perhaps this is because I’m a newcomer to it.

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The cultivators use a dizzying array of magical items with different abilities from a rain of swords to flying fans that turn into rays of light to almost anything imaginable. They are gathered and ordered by ability into sects with different legacies and secret attacks. The higher ups among the different groups fight as viciously as the newbies- perhaps more so because they have their reputations to maintain.

Despite the huge array of items and abilities, this book does become repetitious after two dozen chapters or so as Meng goes from one life threatening situation to another.

A curious aspect of the story was its deviation from my own expectations of what someone of higher spiritual power should act like. When I think of someone ‘spiritual’, I picture people like Mother Theresa, Dalai Lama, and Buddha.

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The cultivators in Patriarch Reliance are nothing like that. They are, for the most part, violent, careless of life, and power-hungry. And they have to be. Or the people studying and meditating beside them will kill them!

I’m not sure what to make of the whole thing except that I’m going to continue on to the next book in the series. Because, despite my bewilderment, it is compulsively readable.

Recommended for fantasy readers who enjoy forays into completely unfamiliar worlds.